Why Is Comcast Charging Spanish-Speaking Customers The Same Price For Slower Service?

By alexchasickApril 17, 2009

UPDATE: We’re bad at Spanish. See below. We came across a Twitter user who, while browsing Comcast’s internet prices, discovered that the Spanish-language version of the site offers reduced speeds at the same prices as the higher speeds seen on the English version of the site. What the hell?

According to the screencast the user made, English-speaking Comcast customers in the Miami area could sign up for 12 megabit per second internet service for $42.95 per month or 16 Mbps for $52.95. When he clicks over the Spanish version of the site, the packages become 6 Mbps for $42.95 and 8 Mbps for $52.95.

We tested it with our address in DC and got the same thing:

When the Twitter post first appeared on the 14th, it alerted Comcast’s excellent Twitter responseteam, who reached out and promised to get on it. We got in touch with them today after confirming the price difference is still there, and they told us they’re waiting to hear back from the people in charge. We’ll update when we hear an explanation from Comcast; in the meantime we’re really hoping this is some kind of technical glitch.

UPDATE: As some of our commenters pointed out, the difference is Comcast’s “PowerBoost,” which apparently doubles the speed of certain downloads. The Spanish text of the internet pricing section talks about PowerBoost, but they don’t list it in big letters like they do on the English site. We had wondered if the discrepancy really was due to the “up to” 12 Mbps part, but didn’t think there would be a gray area of half the advertised speed. Our bad. Here, translated by Babelfish, is the Spanish listing:

It stops crawling in the Web and begins a to burn rims with our service Performance EXTRA (8 Mbps)! And now of PowerBoost®, our fast conección takes control faster, with an extra starting of speed of up to 12 Mbps when you unloading enormous archives like videos and games.